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The national referendum determining Britain’s exit from the 28-nation body called the European Union (EU) – dubbed “Brexit” by the hip British press – has sent shock waves around the world.

That it has done so is a reflection of how narrow the national – and global – media is and how little they see of the world they purport to cover.

It is also a window into the world of rising right-wing nationalism – and a walk away from the very notion of globalism.

The EU, which began as the EC (European Community) was a centuries-long trend to unify Europe as a singular global force – a kind of United States of Europe.

While that notion still has force, to have one of its biggest members vote to leave means that unifying force is weakening.

That’s largely because the EU served its economic elites first – and best – and left working class and poor people to fend for themselves. The Brexit vote demonstrates that older, working-class Brits yearn for British hegemony – the old days of empire – and not to be submerged in a bland European stew.

Other nations now are considering whether the grass really is greener on the other side.

The media used polls and pundits to predict the upcoming vote – and their projections strongly leaned toward British rejection of the Brexit option. Unheard were the voices of the elderly, the rural, the poor, the working classes.

Unheard and unseen, they became the voters for rejection of the globalist project and a return to a more hopeful time.

They provided an immense shock to the system.

The globalist notion, so long seen as the inevitable, has been given a big punch in the nose.

2 thoughts on “Brexit”

Mumia (and some other progressive journalists in the US) has written a story from which it is hard to see if he understands what is going on in the UK. With all respect, there is more going on than he writes in only these few words. I cannot explain it here either in a few words, but this video and other stories make the situation more clear, hopefully. I know he cannot see it right now, but I would like to share it here, an interview by Owen Jones with Yannis Varoufakis, the former Greek minister of Syriza, talking about Brexit (before the referendum took place): "Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis tells me he would love to give Brussels a shock – but a Brexit vote to leave the EU in the UK’s refrendum in June would lead to the disintegration of the European Union and a return to the xenophobia, racism and ultra-nationalism of the 1930s. He also argues that it could also lead to Boris Johnson becoming prime minister." (see also this movement of which Varoufakis is a member: Diem25 https://diem25.org/what-is-diem25/)

And here is Paul Mason, a progressive journalist from Britain, who has spent a lot of time in Greece trying to make sense of what was happening there, and who talks about Brexit here: